§ 100B.002.Liability for Fraudulent Crowdfunding

One sentence, and the choice of claimant is the whole of it.

A person who engages in fraudulent crowdfunding is liable to the donee on whose behalf the donations were made or the donee's estate.

The claim belongs to the donee, not the donors. That is a deliberate and slightly unusual allocation.

The donors have the more obvious grievance — they parted with money on a false representation. But each individual donation is typically small, the donors are numerous and scattered, and no one of them has a claim worth bringing.

The donee has one claim covering the whole campaign, and the damages provision measures it by everything the defendant collected.

The estate is included because these campaigns are frequently run for someone who has died or is dying — a funeral fund, a terminal illness appeal — and the beneficiary may not survive to sue.

Nothing here excludes the donors' own remedies. The chapter creates a claim for the donee; a donor keeps whatever fraud or DTPA claim they otherwise have.

Compare the malicious solicitation chapter, which gives the claim to both the donee and the donor. That difference is the clearest distinction between the two chapters.